The nurse entered and looked around the room with her hands on her hips.
"Well," she said in a light voice and what sounded to Stacey something like a weird Scottish accent, walking over to Stacey and seeing all the porridge in her lap. "This is a right mess, isn't it?"
"You can say again," Stacey made a face.
"He may be awful at feeding you, but the main thing is that he tried. Did you even manage to eat ought?" the nurse tittered. "He needs more practice. He was so romantic singing a love song while he left your room. Do you know how many people he made swoon with that smooth voice? There's not many husbands what care for their wives as much as he does you, ya lucky lass. How many couples these days actually love and care for each other outside their expected duties?"
"You mean most families don't have loving parents?"
"It's different once the wee children come along," the nurse shrugged. "But only for some. Most couples are together because of circumstance, not love." The nurse heaved a heavy sigh. "It's much the same the world over. The numbers of the beastmen have been increasing faster lately and so we women don't have much choice. We can only hope the number of children we bear can help us humans keep our edge before we're overwhelmed."
"Marriage and having children should be consensual between two loving partners…" Stacey refuted and then frowned. Because that was the ideal. Even back home, life often failed to live up to the ideal life. Stacey felt confused.
"In a perfect world perhaps," the nurse nodded.
She supposed she should be grateful that Thieren hadn't tried to do more than tease her so far. If she understood things from the perspective of the people in this world correctly, not getting married and having children would be seen as letting society down. But then, she hadn't had much contact with normal society here. Since she'd arrived, she was busy studying and participating in the program - if she hadn't lost her mind or was in a hospital.
"Are you still hungry?" the nurse asked and Stacey shook her head.
"Then let's get you all cleaned up then, shall we, dearie? I'll let the domestic staff know. I'll help you in the shower while the domestic staff clean the room up. I'm told you'll have visitors later today with your camera man."
With the nurse's help, Stacey managed to perform a standing pivot transfer into a wheeled shower commode. From there, she was pushed into the shower.
While she was showering, Stacey frowned, feeling troubled. She had not expected to be filmed. In fact, she didn't want to be filmed at all. What was the point of filming her in this state besides invading her privacy? She'd have to ask AJ when he came in later. Stacey assumed it would be AJ with the camera, anyway.
The nurse helped Stacey get dressed in casual clothes Stacey didn't know she had. When she came out of the bathroom, the room had been cleaned up.
AJ had already arrived and her bodyguards were helping him set up extra cameras and equipment. Pearl was ready with makeup and hair brush to help make Stacey's eyebags and visible loss of weight less obvious. Hugh and Tutor Carraway had already arrived but hadn't entered the room. She could hear their voices in the corridor discussing the plan for her therapy session today with her main therapists.
Stacey sat in a supportive wheelchair while people bustled around her, feeling her head whirl at the busy-ness. After her friends' visit yesterday, she felt as if her social batteries had been somewhat drained. With so many more people, she wondered if her energy would last the day and if they didn't, what would happen.
Add to that the weight of being filmed. Did she really have to be filmed? Her therapists had often filmed their sessions in the past so that she could see what they had done and be able to work with them on improving. But this was different.
Just because she was feeling a little better, Mr Huo had decided it would be a good time to send out a new video to her channel. Is that what it was? He was just squeezing every drop of value he could out of her in order to earn more money, wasn't he? Why should she call the hateful man by his first name when he had tricked her again? He was always deceiving her. She thought she would have learnt not to trust him by now and yet every time he spoke to her, she would feel moved enough to trust him one more time.
Stacey was getting tired of this. Everyone else seemed to trust him explicitly, but then again, that might be because he was the boss of their bosses or because he was a big behind the scenes figure in the entertainment industry. Was there always a misunderstanding where she was concerned or was she right to not want to keep trusting him? Was he purposely tricking her to force her into things she didn't want to do or was he doing it out of habit because that was how the business world worked?
Stacey wasn't sure. She wasn't even sure how she was going to inform him of this deepening grudge she was developing against him. Should she tell him exactly what she thought of him and his lies?
He'd said she was only going to have visitors, but it had turned into filming a video and putting on appearances. Stacey really didn't want to put on appearances. She didn't want to keep her video channel or have the public watch her anymore. What was so interesting about her? Especially now that she was down.
She could barely accept the fact that she'd had a stroke and that the right side of her body was barely functioning, not to mention the fact that she struggled to talk. She had no more privacy or dignity, because being unable to move properly, she had lost her independence. All she wanted to do was hide away from the public and her own judging eye. It was a pity she couldn't escape from herself.
People busied themselves around her, talking to each other and appearing to talk to her, but not waiting long enough for her to answer. They made decisions for her and guessed what she might want without her actual say so. It was frustrating. She could still speak. She just needed to be given time. It was as if her opinions didn't even matter anymore.
Stacey could feel her mood falling lower and lower. Perhaps no one really cared what she thought or felt beyond what benefits they might get from her. Perhaps everyone around her were habitual liars who were just too good at acting for her to see beyond the face masks they wore in front of her.